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D&D is never going to be 'rules lite' (maybe 13th Age is as close to that as D&D will ever get) but I think my general point was that many recent releases were moving towards streamlined systems over the complexity of AD&D (with its endless little minigames) and Rolemaster.

Aah, 'Tablemaster'. Anyone complaining about large fights getting bogged down with the FFG system has never tried running a combat in Rolemaster with more than two adversaries...

As produced by Iron Crown Enterprises, aka ICE, which is a handy acronym for "Infinite Charts Exist." And I will swear until my dying breath that I saw an officially published chart in one of their Rolemaster splats for blowing your nose

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D&D is never going to be 'rules lite' (maybe 13th Age is as close to that as D&D will ever get) but I think my general point was that many recent releases were moving towards streamlined systems over the complexity of AD&D (with its endless little minigames) and Rolemaster.

Aah, 'Tablemaster'. Anyone complaining about large fights getting bogged down with the FFG system has never tried running a combat in Rolemaster with more than two adversaries...

As produced by Iron Crown Enterprises, aka ICE, which is a handy acronym for "Infinite Charts Exist." And I will swear until my dying breath that I saw an officially published chart in one of their Rolemaster splats for blowing your nose

My gaming group (many years ago) when I used to run this, would joke about there being a 'Fruit Mastery' spell list - "Aaagh, I've taken a D Berry Crit!!"

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D&D is never going to be 'rules lite' (maybe 13th Age is as close to that as D&D will ever get) but I think my general point was that many recent releases were moving towards streamlined systems over the complexity of AD&D (with its endless little minigames) and Rolemaster.

Aah, 'Tablemaster'. Anyone complaining about large fights getting bogged down with the FFG system has never tried running a combat in Rolemaster with more than two adversaries...

As produced by Iron Crown Enterprises, aka ICE, which is a handy acronym for "Infinite Charts Exist." And I will swear until my dying breath that I saw an officially published chart in one of their Rolemaster splats for blowing your nose

My gaming group (many years ago) when I used to run this, would joke about there being a 'Fruit Mastery' spell list - "Aaagh, I've taken a D Berry Crit!!"

I will give ICE credit for their crit charts, which were bloody hilarious with the descriptions of the results.

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My gaming group (many years ago) when I used to run this, would joke about there being a 'Fruit Mastery' spell list - "Aaagh, I've taken a D Berry Crit!!"

I will give ICE credit for their crit charts, which were bloody hilarious with the descriptions of the results.

One of the primary motivations of my group at the time was to get as good as possible to see what crazy result they could generate. I don't recall it being any more or less complicated to deal with than D&D at the time, and the concept of "skills" was revelatory...made the whole thing worth it, while the campaign lasted.

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Update folks - I've been soft phasing out the morality. Instead of making a hard "hey guys, I think morality sucks and we shouldn't use it" announcement, it was more of a I don't really spend any time to keeping an eye out where infractions occur and I haven't really bothered rolling for it in a while now. The mechanic just kind of drifted to a stop and rolled off to the side of the road.

Good news, the FFG Police have not come in their black helicopters in the middle of the night and the game engine hasn't collapsed into a black hole of anarchy! So I think I will keep on ignoring it and use the duty exclusively. Mind you, I seem incapable of rolling under our current duty for the last 4 weeks now, so that's annoying. Last week, the group is at 50, I figure we've got a good shot - 100 came up. Damnit!

(Conversely, I'm really digging the Duty mechanic! That one rocks - even if we're still feeling our way around the rewards.)

Okay, question for you guys. What do you think I should do. We've got a couple of people at Paragonness, at the little bit extra strain and +1 DP level. If I move from passively ignoring it to "Hey guys, lets dump the mechanic" - do you think the bennies aught to go away too? Like I said at the very first post, it's not really a game changer - although we do have one Jedi, through a series of terrible rolls, has not pinged Paragon yet, so I guess leaving them in place would not be fair to the one.

Hmmm, think I just answered my own question. Ah well - I typed all that out. Shame to let it go to waste.

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I find that if I use Morality it's more of a pact with a player. If the player doesn't actively announce that this might put his character into conflict at least once per session, and if I forget to remind him that things might put him into conflict, we essentially forgot to use the conflict mechanic during this session. That's on both of us. So we forgo the roll on the d10 at the end of the session, and try to be better next time.

Result: No automatic coasting towards Paragon, and much less nitpicking. If your players actively remind you of the conflict mechanic, you have much more acceptance of it at the gaming table and players get used to it. And sometimes they are not opposed to roleplay a slow descent into darkness. I find that those players help me out a lot with the conflict mechanic.

You do need somewhat more mature players though. If they just want to play baddie, sometimes I remind them that they will have to create situations that cause them conflict, not just murderhoboing their way through my adventure without rhyme or reason. If they want to do bad things just so they can game the morality meter, I will tell them that I don't buy their motivation to do this and to stop metagaming, this being a narrative system. The threat to withhold XP for metagaming and sabotaging the narrative usually works.

I also remind my players that I'm not out to automatically screw them every time they use a dark side Force pip. Sure, they are a bit more emotional than they should be, but that results in stress, not an automatic fall to the Dark Side. It is mainly there so that players on the brink have difficult choices: Take more time to do things right or get the quick, messy and tainted success right away?

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I think I already mentioned my way earlier, but to summarize: I only call for a Morality roll if the Force user in question played up his or her moral strength and/or weakness. I also make that call individually per player.

But honestly, if the mechanic's not working for you, I'd just toss it. Talk to the players most likely to be affected, probably the two people at Paragon and the one guy struggling to get there, and see if they'll take some other sort of reward in trade for the effort they've put in. You could give them that +1 strain permanently, and then maybe give a slight bump to their Duty in exchange for losing the free Destiny Point? It all depends on how much work you think they did, and how much of it might have been otherwise spent on other pursuits. If I were them, though, I don't think I'd miss Morality.

Now that I'm running two games that have Force users, both of which started out as a mix of Edge and Age, I'm really feeling the "ignore Morality" route. It's a lot of paperwork with vaguely unsatisfying results. The only hard benefit to me is a threshold beyond which a character uses dark pips, but that could also be handled narratively.

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Good news, the FFG Police have not come in their black helicopters in the middle of the night and the game engine hasn't collapsed into a black hole of anarchy!

Don't take off your tinfoil hat too quickly, there, Desslok! Remember that FFG has a terrible track record with their vehicles being slow. They might get round to accosting you in a few months once their one-bladed helicopter manages to limp its way into your hometown, trailing smoke blacker than its matte paint.

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Good news, the FFG Police have not come in their black helicopters in the middle of the night and the game engine hasn't collapsed into a black hole of anarchy!

Don't take off your tinfoil hat too quickly, there, Desslok! Remember that FFG has a terrible track record with their vehicles being slow. They might get round to accosting you in a few months once their one-bladed helicopter manages to limp its way into your hometown, trailing smoke blacker than its matte paint.

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If you're doing away with Morality as a mechanic, I'd say keep it around as a story-driven thing - and therefore keep around the Light and Dark Paragon bennies. But they can only attain one or the other through something significant in your story line/their rp.

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Just finished reading through FaD yesterday. On the subject of Morality, I feel it works fine. Here's my thoughts.

1. All evidence that is taken as Canon and even some Legends material on the force points to the Light side being the natural state of the force. It would make sense one naturally goes towards that.

2. The lure of the dark side is shown not by the system itself but by the actions of the players within the system, choosing to use darkside force points or performing actions that are morally wrong. Power easily corrupts if you seek it and those who use the dark side crave power.

3. Darksiders in Star Wars are pretty clearly shown to consistently oppress, enslave, torture, kill and use any means necessary to achieve their goals. Oftentimes, they go out of their way to be murder-hobos (think of all the Imperial Darth Vader choked to death, the jedi that Palpatine massacred along with all the people in the republic enslaved, oppressed and a little planet called Alderaan).

4. This system isn't designed for you to have a huge struggle to reach Paragon status. That's evidenced when you can start at Paragon from the beginning. Instead, it's made with the idea that one chooses what story they want to tell with their character. If I want my guy to fall to the dark side, I will consistently start taking actions that cause conflict and use darkside force points as much as I can. I'll act in-character as if I crave power that I don't have and choose to follow my character's Moral Weakness. To stay darkside, I'll continue to make Conflict worthy decisions, such as Binding people when they disobey me. If I want redemption, then I'll start working towards that, probably after a significant event causes my character to rethink his actions. It's all how you want to play it out and requires cooperation between the Player and GM.

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To that effect I'm treating Morality hits like Critical hits. I'm still winging it (we haven't explored a lot of Morality stuff yet in my group) so I don't have a solid framework, but in general terms, evil acts impose a critical hit that you have to redeem within the narrative. Otherwise those critical hits stick around, possibly having a mechanical effect.=

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On 2016-5-11 at 2:18 PM, MuttonchopMac said:

What if crossing certain Morality thresholds triggered big narrative moments automatically? Like you talk with the player and establish what those moments look like generally, and how they relate to your emotional strength / weakness. Thresholds could be say, 30, 50, and 70. Morality stops when it would cross a threshold. So if it's at 54, and a player would lower it by 6, it drops only to 50, and triggers for the next session. When it triggers, the session has a distinct moment, and their choice in that moment moves them up or down 5 points of Morality, in addition to regular conflict for the session. It's more drastic.

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On 2016-5-12 at 7:40 PM, KungFuFerret said:

Though the other thing I did, which is totally a house rule, so take it with a grain of salt. Get rid of the requirement to flip a Destiny Point to use Dark Side pips. Aside from the "Dark Side Pips = Evil Puppy Killer!" mindset, the simple mechanical restriction also limits how often a player can use those pips. By removing it, my players have been way more willing to tap into those pips when needed. All I did was increase the strain cost by +1. So if they spend 2 dark pips, they get 3 strain. It's been working out just fine. They can use it whenever they want, and not only when they have the light side DP to burn, and the strain cost is steep enough to be a concern, without being a handicap.

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Sorry to necro an old thread - I just wondered whether there were any updates on how using these alterations has worked since they were suggested here. I think they're all things I would be interested in incorporating into my game, but it would be great to hear whether you've kept using them or ditched them for some reason.